SXSW 2015 Interview: Molly Ringwald & Ally Sheedy Revisit ‘The Breakfast Club’

CraveOnline: Molly, what is your role in Jem and the Holograms?

Molly Ringwald: I play the aunt to these four girls who start this rock band. I’m sort of the mother influence in their lives. Juliette Lewis plays this villainous record executive. It’s fun.

Do you get to sing?

Molly Ringwald: I don’t. I actually don’t sing in the movie. 

What were your favorite movies to watch in the ‘80s?

Molly Ringwald: Reds.

Ally Sheedy: Oh, I was too. I loved that. 

Molly Ringwald: I think I saw that three times in the movie theater and it was a long movie. I loved that movie.

Ally Sheedy: And I loved Terms of Endearment.

Molly Ringwald: And you were really into Katharine Hepburn. 

Ally Sheedy: I was really into Katharine Hepburn and I still feel this way, I loved Debra Winger. I still love Debra Winger so much.

Reds is pretty highbrow.

Molly Ringwald: It was great. I made Judd watch that too. 

Ally Sheedy: Did you?

Molly Ringwald: Yeah, I made him watch it.

What was your favorite ‘80s music, besides Simple Minds?

Ally Sheedy: I loved The Cure. And The Smiths. I think those were my two, and Elvis Costello. 

Molly Ringwald: Yeah, yeah. 

After 30 years, are there any Breakfast Club stories you haven’t told yet?

Molly Ringwald: Probably not.

Ally Sheedy: I don’t think so. 

Molly Ringwald: I think something will come back to me when I’m 90 years old and I’ll remember something.

Is that like when you’re lying awake at night and remember what you should have said earlier in the day?

Molly Ringwald: Probably. 

Ally Sheedy: Sometimes I just remember a moment. Sometimes when we’re talking, I’ll go, “Oh, that’s right, that happened.” The major moments that people want to know about, yes, we’ve talked about them. 

Was there a point over the years that you realized The Breakfast Club wasn’t going away?

Ally Sheedy: I kind of thought that it would go away, but I don’t. After I guess 15 years when it didn’t go away and it has kept snowballing. I lived in Paris in my 20s and at that time, very few people knew about The Breakfast Club. Now everyone knows about it so I feel like it’s entered into movie classic icondom.

Molly Ringwald: I think it has, yeah.

How do you think a group of modern teenagers could form a Breakfast Club with all the social media they have?

Molly Ringwald: I’m not sure it would be as interesting because people would just be sitting on their computer.

Ally Sheedy: Looking at their phones. Or the group would actually exist online. There’d be a Facebook Breakfast Club.

Molly Ringwald: A virtual Breakfast Club and they’d all have their little avatars. 

 


Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.

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